I have heard a lot of discussions, rumors,
and theories of how in the future the
majority of the big-player search engines
will all turn to a pay-per-click (PPC)
model. This has many people and professionals
with the SEO industry worried. Some company
execs, management, and directors have
also been getting worried over their current
SEO investments, or the investments that
they are about to make. It has even reached
the point where I heard of a company that
is so worried that they have ceased their
SEO operations and directed their strategy
towards the PPC market. I think that these
assumptions and forecasts are off target
and pessimistic. Throughout this article
I will give reasons and explanations to
dispel these theories and forecasts that
are causing turbulence throughout the
Internet community.

The
first and most obvious issue that arises
about all search engines turning to PPC
is the general rules of business. For
a business to be truly successful is has
to offer a product or service that is
unique, superior, and desirable. For a
product or service to be unique it does
not have to be completely different, but
it must have some unique distinction over
the competition that makes it more desirable.
For example, Google
is a search engine with the service of
providing users with search results. Google's
service is unique because it provides
users with more relevant results as well
as added functionality that are unmatched
on the Internet. In turn, this makes their
service superior to the competition, and
again in turn more desirable.

There
are already a number of PPC search engines
that are on the Internet. Out of these
search engines there is only one that
is highly successful, Overture.com.
If the majority of search engines were
to change their service as well as their
business model to PPC, they would not
only have to offer something that Overture
currently doesn't, but there would be
very little room for differentiation.
If there is very little room for differentiation
than there is very little room for success.
One of the reasons that search engines
like Google, Fast/AllTheWeb,
and Wisenut
can provide such relevant and good results
to their users is because they will index
all pages, regardless of payment and money.
What is going to happen to the educational,
non-profit, or small business sites that
cannot afford to pay lots of money to
be found. If they have the most relevant
results, shouldn't' their site be pulled
up? The answer is obviously yes.

When
Alta
Vista offered a paid submission, and
inadvertently demanded it, as your site
will not show up for months without paying,
did Google, ODP,
Northern
Light, and WiseNut follow their lead?
No, because there is differentiation between
two companies, their business models,
business plans, and strategies and goals.
The way that they measure success is also
different. This applies to this theory
that all search engines that wish to be
profitable and successful. Yahoo!
has recently partnered with Overture to
place Overture listings on Yahoo's search
engine results pages. When someone performs
a search, in most cases there will be
three paid listings at the top above all
of the Yahoo results, and three Overture
listings at the bottom of the Yahoo listings.
Should all of the search engines follow
Yahoo's lead and begin to bring PPC into
their model for profitability. No!

Let's
go through an example. A search engine
has a strong business model, a large database,
a large user base, and most importantly,
quality results. If the search engine
has a decent hold on the market, there
are two ways to go: up to the top, or
down and out of existence. If the search
engine makes positive changes to their
engine, gets market branding, and increases
their user base while keeping them happy,
then they will move up to the top. If
the search engine becomes stale, making
no changes except for charging more money
for submissions, while it's hold on the
market decreases, then the site will fall
out of the race and out of existence.
If the latter happens to a search engine,
do you think that turning to PPC will
bring it back from the dead? Not likely.

Does
this scenario sound familiar? This is
almost a detailed explanation of what
happened to Alta Vista (AV). Alta Vista
was one of the biggest search engines
on the Internet a few years back. It had
a huge user base, it was spidering and
updating its content regularly, and it
had a partnership with Yahoo!. The partnership
with Yahoo failed, the updating of the
content all but stopped, and the user
base began to dwindle. Alta Vista then
began to offer paid submissions that would
pave the way for faster indexing, but
this became mandatory to see results in
AV as websites that did not pay for submission
were buried in the results pages. The
only thing that stayed consistent was
AV's spidering of the websites, although
this didn't mean that sites would be updated
or show in the search results. Word
Tracker reports that Altavista only
gets 3.1800% of all search engine traffic
(approx. 10 million a day). Compare this
to Google who reportedly gets 23.4800%
of all search engine traffic (approx.
75 million a day), or Yahoo who gets 37.7600%
of all search engine traffic (approx.
121 million a day).

When
Alta Vista's foothold on the search engine
industry began to slip they made attempts
to remedy the situation and gain the competitive
edge back. Although this has not worked
yet, their hold could be easily regained
with some positive change implemented.

The
answer to a search engine's problem is
not to increase the number of ways you
can charge webmasters for submitting the
websites that are building your business
and database. This seems to be the way
out for some search engines, including
AV who now has over 5 ways a webmaster
can pay for their results. Alta Vista
now offers Express Inclusion, Trusted
Feed, Listing Enhancements, advertisements
displayed on the search results pages,
as well as the Overture listings displayed
on the top of search results. With all
of these ways of to pay, AV is leaving
out the small-business, non-profit organizations,
and reference and research sites that
Overture does. Where are the relevant
search results?

I
am in no way declaring that PPC is bad
and has no place on the Internet, but
there are some things that PPC search
engines are for and some things that it
should leave to engines like Google and
AllTheWeb. A PPC search engine is good
for an e-commerce website, as they can
buy a spot at the top, see how many times
the search is performed, how many times
the link is clicked, track how many times
the user buys the product, and then figure
out what the return on investment (ROI)
is. When someone uses Overture, in most
cases they are searching for a particular
product or service. Overture is not the
search engine that most of the Internet
population uses for their research.

The
major players (search engines and directories)
on the Internet, when speaking in terms
of amount of traffic, are Google, Yahoo,
AOL, and MSN. The other search engines
that are up and coming are Fast/AllTheWeb,
WiseNut, and Teoma.
WiseNut is new to the game, but they have
a strong business model and a strong search
engine with a large database. WiseNut
also provides good, relevant results to
their users. Teoma is another one of the
search engines that is new to the game.
They are still in the Beta version, and
have been acquired by AskJeeves, but they
have potential to stand with the big-boys.
Fast/AllTheWeb has emerged as one of the
big players and is now a potential direct
contender with Google. Fast/AllTheWeb
has added functionality that poises the
search engine to play "king of the mountain"
with Google. The search engine recently
added their "Fresh News Search" which
gives you up to date news results that
the Fast/AllTheWeb updates fast and often.
All three of these search engines could
easily emerge as the next Search Giant
if one of the current ones decides to
fall to the allure of PPC.